"Can you imagine a computer history museum that has to be packed up and put away each winter and then unpacked each summer, and which has three potbellied pigs as its mascot? I can, because I've just visited the DigiBarn, a wonderful trip down silicon memory lane that's nestled into a 19th-century farmhouse deep in the Santa Cruz mountains, about 90 minutes south of San Francisco."
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-12
Sorry to keep responding to everyone's posts, but...
Yeah, me too. I was a bit older than you (22, when I first got started in 1982), but I really loved the old 8-bit era. I've been collecting some of the older computers, as my wife (*and space) allows.
Computing has grown stale and common-place these days. It has turned into a commodity thing, like watching TV or listening to the radio (does anyone still do that?). Back in the late 70's and early to mid 80's, computing (for the masses) WAS new and exciting, at least to those of us that felt the pull. You would type a command on the keyboard, or write a small BASIC program, and your computer would so something YOU had commanded it to do. It was like magic!
I've managed to recapture some of that early excitement by switching to Linux and the *BSD's. It isn't quite the same, but it is enough for me, and keeps me feeling that there's more to computing than just a way to earn a living.
You can't go back, the world keeps turning, but you can, for brief moments, recapture some of the wonder we experienced in the early days of microcomputers! :-)
Member since:2005-08-02
Member since:
2005-11-13
I fell in love with computers back in the 80s as a child/early teen.
I still have a c64, 1541 drive and a clone RGB monitor hooked up in the other room.
There was something about computers back then that is missing these days. I can't put my finger on it. Maybe I was young and it all seemed so new and exciting.